Boston reignites terror stings debate

Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsaernaev allegedly hatched a real plot that killed three and injured nearly 200 at last month’s Marathon bombings.

Many experts say Boston could have been spared all that blood and destruction if only the FBI had lured the brothers into a fake one, as part of the FBI’s controversial terror sting campaign.

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In many of the sting cases, an FBI informant or agent approaches a target to inquire about his interest in committing a terrorist act. The approach sometimes comes after a tip or intercepted communications suggesting an individual discussed violence, though critics say Muslims are sometimes approached out of the blue. If the suspect agrees to participate, a plot is generated, and the FBI furnishes the suspect with inert explosives or disabled weapons.

“Before the bombing, these were a couple of guys who had gotten radicalized to the point of being potential terrorists, but they hadn’t yet taken the step of going operational. Those are the people who these sting operations are designed to catch and neutralize,” said Ken Wainstein, the first head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division and a former chief of staff to FBI Director Robert Mueller. “They are a great tool for separating the violent from the non-violent extremists, and they deter others who might think about resorting to violence.”

But other experts believe a plan to enmesh the Tsarnaev brothers in a fake terror operation would have encountered any number of disqualifying real world hurdles — and that efforts like it may harm the government’s effectiveness in pursuing legitimate plots.

In the Washington area, sting operations have been used successfully in recent years to plan and prosecute plots to carry out a suicide bombing of the U.S. Capitol and to set off bombs in Metrorail stations. In Oregon, Mohamed Mohamud was convicted of attempting to blow up the Portland Christmas tree lighting ceremony back in 2010. And a Massachusetts man, Rezwan Ferdaus, was recently sentenced to 17 years in prison for plotting to fly model airplanes carrying plastics explosives into the Capitol and the Pentagon.

In fact, lawyers say the government has yet to lose a terror sting case it prosecuted — although that record may belie a more complicated set of results.

The actual number of sting operations run may be far higher than 150, since those that don’t result in prosecution rarely get reported.

Civil liberties groups, Muslim organizations and others argue that the FBI has been essentially generating crimes by individuals who may have been theoretically open to the idea of committing a terrorist act, but lacked the focus, sophistication and opportunity to carry out such a plan without the active involvement of the agency. The courts, while ruling in favor of the government, have issued similar warnings.

And some critics say the FBI lacks the massive amount of resources needed to run fake operations to recruit every potential terrorist without diverting its attention from investigations that may uncover existing plots.

“The problem is those very resource-intensive investigations spend all this time on a person whose capability of carrying out an attack is not very significant,” said Mike German, a former FBI agent who now works for the American Civil Liberties Union.